Thursday, November 4, 2010

Quick, Let's Avoid Talking!!

Terrified at the thought of having to sit with This Woman He Seems to be Married To for anywhere from fifteen minutes to three hours during a delay at the airport, Our Hero gets the bright idea of connecting to "The Cloud," which in his case means accessing their home pc and bringing up recorded television shows.

His unkempt wife is on board, as long as it's "Celebrity Probation- the Premiere." Is this a real show? It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest. Nor does the closing scene, which features these two sadly distant airheads happily watching television ("Yay Cloud!" sighs this truly pathetic, witless, sad woman as she stares at people who seem to be having a pillow fight on a couch. Not exactly PBS..) complete with sound, without the use of earphones.

In fact, there are several of these "Cloud" commercials which show clueless antisocial choads happily consuming brain-sucking television in public and using their laptop's speakers, oblivious to the possibility that the people around them just MIGHT want to be left to enjoy conversations, books, or their own God Don't Leave Me Alone With My Thoughts or My Life Partner Distraction Tool without being forced to listen to (gag) "Celebrity Probation." Just more examples of the "F-U, I'm having fun, if you don't like it, wear headphones yourself" culture we find ourselves living in.

It started with transistor radios. Then it was the Walkman, and then the cell phone with the loud, obnoxious ringtone which actually encouraged people to delay answering. Now we've moved on to portable television, which we are urged to enjoy any place, any time, without headphones. Awesome.

5 comments:

When I first saw this gem I knew it wouldn't be long before you got your hands on it. First, I can tell you with certainty that "Celebrity Probation" is not a real show and is just some generic, contrived joke I guess because god know Microsoft can't afford to pay Paris Hilton or the cast of Jersey shore a few bucks so that they could actually show you "the cloud" doing something real. The next thing that pisses me off, and this is becoming more and more popular in commercials these days is the part where the husband breaks down "the fourth wall", looks into the camera and speaks to the audience. This leads his lesbian, circus clown looking wife to say "what?" and look around confused trying to figure out who her husband is speaking to. Nobody believes that this is a real airport with non-actors going about their normal day to day and are shocked to see a camera recording them. I mean it's not like they're at a Hyundai dealership or something. And finally, my favorite part is where the circus clown says "yay cloud". You can almost here her soul dieing as she comes to term with what a joke her acting career has become. And that the only work she can get is being a mindless shill for whatever mega-corporation is slapping together the cheapest, quickest, unimaginative commercial they could come up with.

On the other hand, the whole idea of a reality show called "Celebrity Probation" is just screaming hilarious. If "Celebrity Probation" did exist, it would probably be ten times better than "A Real Chance at a Shot of Tequila on the Jersey Shore With the Kardashians," or whatever they're calling it these days.